Fort Thomas is bringing in an outside consulting firm, advancing plans first raised last fall to hire an HR consultant amid ongoing workplace and procedural questions.
The Fort Thomas City Council approved an $18,000 contract with consultants One Digital at its meeting on Feb. 17. The discussion continues a conversation from last October, when the city said it was looking to hire an HR consultant to address ongoing city issues.
Those issues include Fort Thomas City Administrator Matt Kremer’s relationship with the city’s economic development director and a pension payment Kremer submitted to the state without council approval. The city discussed hiring an outside HR consultant in an executive session during a special council meeting to address the relationship and the pension payment.
The HR consultant will conduct surveys and interviews with city employees to gauge issues while working for the city. The city’s current human resources officers are Kremer and the mayor.
“They’re also going to be giving us a playbook-if they find anything that we’re doing old school that should be updated, they’ll find that,” said Fort Thomas Mayor Andy Ellison.
The city said in October that the hire was also needed because Kremer’s relationship with a city employee may violate city personnel policies and procedures. The city’s Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual prohibits managerial and supervisory employees from becoming romantically involved with employees they supervise and states such conduct may result in disciplinary action, up to and including discharge.
The city council tasked interim finance director Linda Chapman with recommending three to five HR firms for the council to interview. Ellison set up a committee of two council members (Jeff Bezold and Eric Strange) to interview three consultants.
“That $18,000 is the high end,” Kremer said. “Those first few months are going to be heavier, is what we’re expecting. It might not be, but generally, to start up, it’s going to be a little bit more, and then we expect it to trickle off.”